Ladislav klima autobiography books

 

[ excerpt ]

also by the author:
Glorious Nemesis

A Postmortem Dream

 the sufferings of prince sternenhoch
A Grotesque Romanetto

by Ladislav Klíma

translated from the Czech by Carleton Bulkin
illustrations by Jan Konůpek
afterword by Josef Zumr

Philosopher, novelist, essayist, eccentric, no other Czech author has had a greater impact on underground culture than Ladislav Klíma ().

Mentor to artists as varied as Bohumil Hrabal and the Plastic People of the Universe, Klíma’s philosophy was radically subjectivist, and he felt it should be lived rather than merely spoken or written about. With Nietzsche as his paragon, he embarked upon a lifelong pursuit to become God, or Absolute Will, elucidating this quest in many letters, aphorisms, and essays.

Yet among Klíma's fictional texts, the apotheosis of his philosophy is The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch, his most acclaimed novel. Ostensibly a series of journal entries, the tale chroni